The Romance of Modern Chemistry

MORE ABOUT FUEL taken place in South Germany, where a plant has been put down beside an extensive peat bog, and is turning out tar, paraffin, ammonia, and coke. If this process should be found commercially sound, we may yet see the peat bogs of Ireland being converted into productive ground, while at the same time a new industry will be available for the people. Leaving out of account for the moment the tar, ammonia, and sulphur obtained as by-products in the destructive distillation of coal, we may regard the net result of the operation as giving us for fuel coke coal gas instead of coal. Now whereas coal is an exceedingly dirty fuel, both coke and coal gas are clean fuels, burning without smoke. Bearing this in mind, we might ask the question whether it would not be possible to modify the destructive distillation of coal in such a way as to obtain a coke-like product, which would, however, still retain enough gas- producing material to make it readily inflammable, and which would at the same time be a smokeless fuel. Experiments made during the last four or five years have shown that this is possible when the temperature of the retorts, instead of being raised to 1600° or 1700° Fahrenheit, as is usual in gasworks, is kept about 800°. The quantity of gas given off during the heating is not so large, but the half-coked coal left in the retorts, contain- ing as it does a certain proportion of volatile matter, is a smokeless, easily ignited fuel. This product is now on the market under the name of coalite. The convenience of gaseous fuel for many purposes has stimulated efforts on the part of chemists to convert carbon entirely into combustible gaseous products. It was discovered long ago that when a current of steam is passed through red-hot carbon, an inflammable gas is pro- 150